The City of Ottawa says it is working on standards for local pickleball courts
Paul Basi isn’t sure if he wants to stay a member of the Manotick Tennis Club or not.
The 50-year-old just started playing pickleball recently, and he loved playing last summer on the club’s outdoor courts that had been turned into tennis courts.
“Compared to tennis,” he said, “you leave [the game] playing halfway well and wanting to play more.”
But after people living nearby complained about how loud the paddles and hard plastic balls were, the City of Ottawa told the club that they can no longer play pickleball outside in the park.
Last week, the news was posted on the club’s website. Now, players like Basi are hearing about it. Basi isn’t sure what he will do this summer because of the other options, which include painted lines on arena floors and old outdoor courts in North Gower.
“No one would be excited about being cooped up in an indoor facility when they want to be outside enjoying the sun,” he said.
But because pickleball games went late into the night last summer, people who live near Centennial Park say that something had to give.
The park already had baseball diamonds and a soccer field, but the sound of pickleball cut through the noise, according to a number of people.
“It’s about 10 times as loud as tennis,” said Scott Shannon, whose house is on the street next to the park. He also said that some neighbors have worn headphones that block out noise.
Saralyn Hodgkin, Shannon’s wife, said, “It stinks as a pickleball player to see the outdoor courts spiked.” She added that people on the block also play pickleball.
“But as a member of the community, I’m happy to help people live in their homes without going crazy. That is more important to me than being able to get to pickleball quickly.”
‘Victims of our own success
Ottawa is not the first city in Canada to have to figure out how to balance the growing popularity of pickleball with the peace and quiet of those who don’t play.
But the Manotick Tennis Club says it was one of the first clubs in Ottawa to turn outdoor tennis courts into pickleball courts, so it is the first to run into this kind of noise problem.
The conflict in Manotick also reflects a lack of adequate space for the sport’s devotees and a dearth of existing city regulations meant to keep things in harmony, those involved say.
“We were victims of our own success because pickleball became so popular,” said Javier Ruano Valdez, who is in charge of tennis activities at the club.
Valdez said that when the club turned one of Centennial Park’s six tennis courts into four pickleball courts in 2018, it was not only in response to the passion of Florida snowbirds for the sport but also to get more people to join the club.
The club, which had only about 450 members, looked at 600. Since piloting pickleball, that number has gone up to 825, and the club says that members can now play both sports.
“Everything worked out well. But then we have to be kind to our neighbors, and it’s very loud, “Valdez said this about the responses he got when he found people’s lost balls in their yards.
“Imagine you want to drink your coffee on your porch or in your back yard on a Sunday morning and you hear the tong-tong-tong. Or, you’re ready to relax with a glass of wine after a long week of work, but you hear the tong-tong-tong “Valdez said.
Basi said that people like to play doubles, which sometimes involves 16 people hitting four balls back and forth at the same time.
“It seems like a more social game, so there’s probably more noise and laughter,” said Diana Dowthwaite, the pickleball coordinator for the Manotick Tennis Club board and the president of the Ottawa Pickleball Association.
Plans for permanent outdoor courts in the park were thrown out
Some people don’t mind the sound, though.
Bobby Strawbridge doesn’t live as close to the courts as some people do, and he knows that some people find it annoying. But he says “the pitter patter of the pickleball” is a good sign that summer is here.
He said, “We sit on the gazebo in the back yard and realize that this is what it’s all about: people having fun outside.”
The City of Ottawa looked into ways to stop the noise, but decided that some ideas wouldn’t work.
The city said in a statement that lower-noise paddles and balls could change how the game is played, and the courts’ fences weren’t made to hold sound-absorbing panels or withstand high winds, which raised the risk of property damage.
“It still didn’t work,” Valdez said, even though the number of hours they played was cut.
In early 2022, when the club was consulting with the community about its plan to build permanent pickleball courts elsewhere in Centennial Park—a plan that the city had approved in principle—it first heard “a chorus of concern from neighbors,” said Lori Gadzala, a longtime member of the club’s board.
According to a summary of consultation results, one resident said, “This will make it much harder for me to enjoy my garden.”
In a survey with 72 responses, 53% said they were in favor of or mostly in favor of the expansion plan, but 38% said the noise was a serious concern. When asked what could be done to make things better, 21% said the project should be moved to another place in Manotick.
Now, the club is looking at other places to meet.
“I think it hurt what we already have in the end,” Basi said.
There were other sites for 2023
In a statement, the city said that the decision to stop letting the club play pickleball outside at Centennial Park was made because of how loud it was and how long the courts were used (up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week).
In addition to the 19 emails, the city staff also got more than 100 phone calls and heard complaints about pickleball at six meetings with the community.
Rideau-Jock County Coun. David Brown first heard about the racket when he was doing door-to-door campaigning in Manotick for the 2022 election. He said that the four pickleball courts at the park will be turned back into one tennis court.
The city has offered to paint lines in some arenas, including one right next to the park, to help make up the difference.
Even though the club says the hours might not be as flexible, Brown says that having five to six courts inside will make the sport more accessible.
The city is also thinking about turning the tennis courts at Alfred Taylor Park in North Gower into something else. The courts are getting old, but the site hasn’t been looked at yet.
Dowthwaite said, “It won’t be as good as the Manotick courts.” “We’ve spent a lot of money on them in the last couple of years to make them better.”
Brown admitted that the temporary fixes for 2023 won’t please everyone, but he said he had “every confidence” they’d find a permanent outdoor location and an agreement to protect pickleball at the Manotick Tennis Club and grow its membership.
“In fact,” Brown wrote in an email to his constituents, “no other sports group in Ottawa has had the offer of multiple arena surfaces to help a membership or fee-based organization deal with the effects of a change like this.”
Start work on local standard
Valdez and Dowthwaite say that the incident shows that the city needs to start regulating where outdoor pickleball courts are built.
Brown agreed.
“We want to make sure that in the future, we take care of [concerns] properly from the start because we don’t want to be in the same situation as the Manotick Tennis Cub and others,” he said.
The city said that work on making rules and policies, such as required distances between courts and nearby homes, will start this year.
Gadzala said that people who live close to the park have offered to help raise money for a permanent place outside.
“I’m kind of hoping that instead of the controversial and adversarial approach that members and pickleball players have had in other cities, we can be the model of how to work together to find good places to play that everyone can agree on,” she said.